Urijah Faber defeats Scott Jorgensen; Cat Zingano defeats Miesha Tate

Credit: Esther Lin.

I’m not sure what you can do with Urijah Faber at this point. He’s like a more charismatic, marketable, exciting version of Jon Fitch. He’ll clearly take out most of the top ten at this point. Usually in exciting fashion, but it’s hard to give him another title shot without a large portion of the audience groaning. He’s clearly the third best bantamweight at this point and I just don’t see anyone knocking him off that ranking in the foreseeable future. Maybe Michael McDonald or some under the radar Brazilian in two years. Faber’s like the Harold Lloyd of the bantamweight division, it’s too bad that he came around in a time when Buster Keaton/Renan Barao and Charlie Chaplin/Dominick Cruz were around.

Faber and Jorgensen put on a really entertaining fight. Jorgensen was much more competitive than I thought he would be, landing some good strikes on Faber. “The California Kid” hit several knees to the body that were fantastic. The scrambles on the floor were gorgeous. Faber’s striking is fun, but Faber on the ground is where he is at his best. The rear-naked choke submission came in at 3:16 of the forth frame. It was another nice submission for Faber, his 16th career submission victory.

The fight that stole the show was Miesha Tate vs Cat Zingano. Zingano was struggling early on, getting taken down and being the victim of some of Tate’s striking. Zingano ate some big punches in that first frame. In the second round, the momentum started changing and Zingano was started to hurt Tate. In the third round, Zingano looked awesome and showcased her much talked about killer-instinct. Those knees at the end (and the elbow) were brutal to watch. I thought that was a fair TKO stoppage, which came at the 2:55 mark.

I haven’t watched TUF in years, but if the show is actually going to have well-known women fighters and solid prospects on the reality show, then I will make it part of my weekly routine.

In the TUF finale, Kelvin Gastelum defeated Uriah Hall via split decision. It was a pretty close fight, and I thought Gastelum had won (29-28). I was disappointed in seeing Hall pretend like he’s Anderson Silva. He wasn’t, which is the understatement of the century. Gastelum took advantage of the situation and it was nice to see him walk away with the contract.